'The object of spiritual discernment', Santayana writes, 'is not pure Being in its
infinity, but finite being in its purity.' Of course, purity is a relative affair --
especially in the City of Man, where, as Dante in De Monarchia says of justice,
it is like a white colour all too easily soiled. But that is only to confess that
lighter greys are welcome after much commerce with the darker shades.

Let us agree that every attempt at philosophical investigation starts out from
some structural prejudice -- some predisposition to arrange the basic categories
and relations in one way rather than another. Such predisposition is unavoid-
able, for every attempt to avoid it falls back upon other predispositions of a more
covert kind. The best thing, then, is to bring one's prejudices into the open, so
far as relevant, by declaring one's main presuppositions and exposing something
of the mental pattern from which one proceeds.

The main presuppositional structure that lies behind, so far as I can detect,
the analysis about to be offered may be described as a basic epistemological
triad in place of the epistemological dyad associated with the name of Descartes.
For the Cartesian dyad of mind vs. matter -- of mental subject vs. physical
object -- although rather widely maligned in recent critical writings, continues
to cast its shadow over much of our attempted philosophical thinking. That is
to say, instead of conceiving our problems in terms of the familiar subject-
object dualism, I propose that we think triadically in terms of subject, object,
and language; giving to language (to what Mr Richards has called the semantic
'vehicle') an equal place with the other two terms, subject and object, since
neither their distinction nor their relation is possible except through linguistic
operation.

Of course language, in order to take its place in this basic triadicity, must be
understood in the broadest possible sense, as applying to any semantic vehicle
whatever, and not as necessarily involving words and syntax. Granted that
language as involving words and syntax is language of the most generally
important and recognizable kind, and that for many purposes of discussion
and interpretation it is advisable to employ the word 'language' in the more
restricted sense, still, for basic analysis we require a broader concept -- in fact,
the very broadest concept possible -- of that which is characterized by the unique
property of referring to something other than, or at least more than, itself.
Perhaps the epithet 'semantic vehicle' might seem preferable for so general a
use, but there would be some danger lest both the adjective and the noun
might dispose one to prejudge and limit the nature of 'that which means' and
its relation to the something meant. The concept of language that my proposed
analysis involves is a concept of 'that which means' in an altogether unrestricted
sense. A word, a scientific formula, a poem, a ritualistic gesture, the Goldberg
Variations, the Ghiberti bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistry, the falling
of a leaf or of a sparrow: each such odd specimen of existence may have, for
someone's mind or for some group of minds, a meaning. Each, that is to say,
may not only be 'what it is and not another thing' (in Bishop Butler's forth-
right phrase) but may also point to, suggest, stir some inquiry about, some-
thing else -- whatever the character, plausibility, and existential status of the

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